This Is the Opposite of Jealousy

11/24/2015 04:52 pm ETUpdated
Nov 24, 2016

Psychologist Bram Buunk studied the fascinating emotion we call jealousy over the course of four decades. The focus and the critical questions of his research changed over the years, adapting to acquired knowledge, shifting attitudes, and evolving societal norms surrounding sexuality, monogamy, and non-exclusive relationships.

In a recent presentation hosted by the Program for the Study of LGBT Health in New York, Dr. Buunk shared findings from his examination of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity differences in response to potential infidelity.

During the open discussion that followed his lecture, I asked whether gay men in open relationships experience jealousy differently than their monogamous counterparts. Dr. Buunk, who studied jealousy in open heterosexual marriages since the early eighties, explained that there is little data on jealousy in non-monogamous gay couples. That's when someone mentioned a word unfamiliar to most people in the audience: compersion.

Compersion is a neologism coined to describe positive feelings in response to one's partner sexual or romantic experience with another person.

We can be thrilled for our partner if they get a raise or promotion or receive some kind of unexpected windfall, but why can't we be happy for our partners who find joy in bed with someone else?

Compersion differs from candaulism, the practice in which someone exposes their partner to other people for their voyeuristic pleasure. Compersion doesn't entail specific activities. It describes positive emotional reactions in response to fulfilling connections between an individual's partner and a person outside of the relationship.

More widely, the term refers to joy experienced by some people when their significant other has an uplifting, pleasurable relation, sexual or otherwise, with another person.

Regardless of its origin, the word compersion, currently still unknown to most people, seems to describe the experience of some men and women in non-monogamous relationships appropriately; feelings most people aren't socialized to sense or acknowledge.